


Luz Noceda and the Bookhounds of London

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon), Trail of Cthulhu (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cthulhu Mythos, Gen, Mashup, Ratings and Categories Subject to Change, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26227321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Luz Noceda makes a strange new acquaintance at the Boiling Flea Market, and finds herself employed as a book scout for the cryptic Edalyn Clawthorne.  Edalyn has more secrets than Luz could possibly have guessed, and the adventure that sweeps her up is far darker than anything she dreamed of.A mashup of The Owl House and the Cthulhu Mythos setting Bookhounds of London.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	1. The Woman in the Stall and the Rat in the Wall

_No bells will ring, no children sing_

_They're gonna pull my body from the ground that day_

\--"Space Ghosts," Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

* * *

What would her mother say if she knew she was here?

_Luz, miha--what brought you to this place?_

She would never willingly walk to this part of London alone. It didn't feel quite as apocalyptic as Whitechapel, sure, but there were sizes of rat she'd rather be eaten by rather than take a trip to Whitechapel alone. The promise of a flea market that didn't ask any questions and was open today, of all days, was all she had on her side.

That and her dear friend on call in her secret sleeve pocket.

That's the spirit, Luz, she thought. Nose to the grindstone! Keep your chin up! Like, maybe the grindstone is on a shelf!

You _totally_ have this.

And if you don't, you can cut your way out.

She yelped as her cart hitched on a rock on the sidewalk, and darted out in front of her pram before everything spilled out. She rocked her skinny body in the direction of the cart and returned her goods--a stack of old books, gently-used magazines, a few dolls, some other bric-a-brac she'd been squirreling away for today--back safely where they belonged. She pat her goods, wished she'd brought a cloth or rope to tie it all down, and resumed her shove to the Boiling Flea Market.

The Flea Market was a two-story affair, the top story being on the streets proper, the bottom being a step below down a set of staircases on either side of the cut-out. Looking down had the feeling of peering into an open-air basement; rows and rows of tables and carts and stalls, piled high with bric-a-brac, men and women dressed to varying degrees of proper and shabby wading through the narrow alleys, the sound of their chatter the low music of markets. Somewhere, someone was playing a violin.

Luz made a circuit of the street-level Flea Market and saw no space she could squeeze into. Moreover, her cart disrupted the human flow of foot traffic. Maybe because it was old and had a wheel that liked to get stuck, maybe because they smelled desperation on her. She really, really didn't wanna move this old sucker down a set of stair,. but it looked like she had no choice. There were gaps in the stalls below, at least. She wouldn't have to park just outside the flea market like a lame, desperate hanger-on... never mind that's what she was.

She walked back around to the rear staircase, took a deep breath, cursed her scrawny arms, and hefted her cart up in her hands. Trying to go with the flow of foot traffic and failing miserably, she skidded down the staircase, braced on the greasy, damp wall of the staircase 'til she fumbled at the last step and just barely failed to keep her basket from spilling.

She shoved her cart to the side and scooped up the fallen goods, straightening and wiping grunge off magazine covers and books, shaking off moisture from one of her old dolls, all while people shoved past her, cursing her clumsiness, her taking up of space, or her non-whiteness.

Don't let them know it hurt, she thought, as she centered the doll on her pile of stuff. It's a little dirty, she thought, but everything here is a little dirty. You'll be fine. You'll do just fine, Luz...

She followed her instincts 'til she found a space just right for her cart. She parked it, took a look around. There was enough room to walk around her cart, her neighbor to her left was a gnarled old man with Coke-bottle glasses selling a bunch of clocks in varying states of repair, and her neighbor to her right was selling...

...books.

Oh, man. _Books_. The best thing in the world. The table was covered in books, from regal leather-bound books under glass to a cardboard box full of adventure magazines--she could tell just from the colorful stripes of color along the magazines' edges. She could and would devour the entire set, even the boring history ones and the atlases, but she would ruin this entire trip just to buy the entire lot of everything with a zeppelin or a ray gun or some really good kissing.

Focus, Luz! You finally parked! The sign--

She fished the sign, which she'd pinned between the hardcover books and the side of the basket, and clipped it to the front of the cart. Then she turned it around so the sign LUZ'S KNICKS AND KNACKS! with a list of prices was plainly visible. She struck a pose by her cart and waited for the buyers to start walking up to relieve her of her burden and let her blunt the edge of this month's bills.

Nearly ten seconds passed before the proprietor of the book-selling table stood up from behind the table. "Hey, kid," she said.

"Hi!" Luz said, attempting a stylish turn-around and managing to not totally look ridiculous.

The book-seller was an older woman; it was hard to pin down an age, anywhere from a shopworn forty to a perky sixty, maybe. Whatever she was, she had voluminous gray hair, with a fairer-gray stripe radiating out from her temple and forelocks like a headband. Maybe it was the light, but her eyes had a faintly amber cast. In spite of her functional dress she wore heavy golden earrings and a gaudy ring. An amulet dangled over her chest, and it was this Luz was staring at when the proprietor said, "You done lookin' at my tits, kid?"

"Ha ha, what?" Luz said. "Of course I'm a legitimate businesswoman. I have the goods if you have the scratch."

The woman leaned over the table, resting her angular face in her hands. "It's cool, everybody stares, if they have taste." She winked. "Nice selection you got there. Where you get it from?"

"Oh, these are fine antiques that my family are looking to pass on to people who are quite ready to classy up their home or office or club!" Luz said, falling into the spiel she'd been practicing. "I see you have an interest in books, would you like a slightly damp June 1932 Weird Tales?"

Oh please don't take this one, it's got that cute naked girl on it, Luz thought, even though she knew the cover would sell the book.

"Hmmm," the woman said, straight-up lying on top of her table like it was a lumpy, uncomfortable bed. "I think I have that one. Tell you what, though. My normal assistant apparently decided not to show up to work today, and, well, look at all this squiz stuff." She tapped a bell jar. "I can't leave it alone. If I watch your cart, could you be a dear and run me an errand real quick?"

Luz looked around. "I... dunno. I've got a--"

"I'll pay you real money."

"I'm listening!"

The lady turned around, reclining on her table dramatically like a fainting couch. "So, here's the deal. My man, Grimhammer, he got this book at auction three weeks ago, the 1922 Audubon Society Bird-Watcher's Almanac. His customer, he's coming by at 3 to get his nice, newly-koshered Almanac, and wouldn't you know it, ol' 'Tibbles' Grimhammer forgot to run it by me for nearly an entire month."

Luz nodded. "I've been there," she said. "Well, the forgetting-for-a-month part, anyway..."

"Haven't we all. So, listen close: he's halfway down the alley--" She pointed southward. "--and he'll be on your right, at Grimhammer's Fine Grimoires. The book will be on the left-hand side of the stall, in a bookshelf full of books about birds. You can't miss it, it's a half-calf, black leather, copper lettering."

Luz nodded again. "Got it. 1922 Audubon! Black leather!"

"Be quick, be discrete. Tibbles is going to be upselling somebody, so don't interrupt him, and especially don't yell to his customers that he forgot to authenticate his books. And if anybody asks, just say 'I work for Eda' and show them this card." She flipped a business card into her hand and held it out.

On top of the card was a shiny golden pound coin. Luz stared in awe at the shiny gold coin for a moment before moving it away and reading the card:

EDALYN CLAWTHORNE  
of the world-famous  
OWL HOUSE  
Books Fine and Fun  
For Your Pleasure

And below it, the Owl House's address and a simple icon, the face of a wide-eyed, inoffensive-looking owl.

Eda made a "ch-chik" noise and pumped her pointing finger back and forth. "I've got my eye on your stuff. Go get 'em, kid."

Luz looked at her cart, at the little slice of her life she was hoping to pawn off. Books that had been in the family for three generations, following the Noceda clan across two continents and the British Isles. Dolls that reminded her of her father every time she looked at them. Magazines that filled her quiet time with adventure and wonder and (pretty people) daring heroes that took her mind off the increasing terribleness of the world.

"Promise you're gonna keep it safe?"

"I swear on my life," Edalyn said, crossing her heart and flashing a wide, warm smile. Her right incisor was plated in gold; it was so long and sharp it looked like a fang.

Luz tucked the sovereign and card into her pocket, the same as Dama Aguda. "Alright. Back in five."

She was much more graceful and easy to lose in the crowd without her cart--gee, almost like fifty pounds of crap piled in an old cart was kind of cumbersome. She watched the motion of the crowds for a moment before slipping into the current, the center lane of packed bodies seeking their next score. Her fear had the edge bitten off; there were much richer-looking people here, and they didn't seem to have that instinctive sense of danger that she had developed over her time in London. If she felt like it, she could've padded out her day's earnings by a fair bit.

But she didn't feel like it, because that would be stealing, and wrong. You couldn't just give in to temptation even when you couldn't get caught. People have to live to a higher standard than the world set for them.

So she made it to Grimhammer's Fine Grimoires without any new wallets. The stall had stuck out even from street level, and seeing it head on, it looked like someone had transported an entire tiny bookstore from Tralfagar Square and stuck it between all the cheap earnest local outfits just trying to make it. In the fully enclosed stall there stood a little person, eagerly chatting with a prospective customer, holding up a tome the size and weight of a small child. It looked like a significant portion of his own weight, at that. Not that her mother taught her to judge a book by its cover (just a little book humor, there), but he was a uniquely ugly man, his big ears, scrunched face, and Coke-bottle glasses giving the impression of both a pig and a mouse.

She slipped through the stream of people like a little fish and popped out on the left-hand side of Grimhammer's bookstore-stall. Right at the edge, just before Grimhammer's ended and a table covered in irregular and spooky dishware and little statues began, was a free-standing book case. Right in the middle was the book she was looking for.

She posed as a customer until she felt the invisible pressure of gaze lift from her back, slipped the book out and under her vest, and turned to face a very large man with a well-oiled truncheon at his waist. He stood with his feet wide and hands on his waist, one squeezing the cord-wrapped handle of his club.

"Gettin' ahead of yourself, miss?" he said. "Mr. Grimhammer will be ready for you in a minute."

"It's cool," she said, _sotto voce_. "I work for Eda." She fumbled for the card and held it out, covering her view of the guy's face.

His posture went slack. She didn't see his expression change; she only heard him say, "Oh, I see." He walked away. Luz let out a nervous breath, then rejoined the tide of people.

She reached Eda with no further problems. She was quite pleased to see that Eda wasn't standing behind her table, but Luz's hand cart, and not a thing was out of place, aside from one of the old family books she was reading to pass the time. Luz slipped the book out of her vest and set it on her cart. "Here you go!" she said.

"Very nice," Eda said, exchanging Luz's book for the Almanac and looking it over. She flipped through the pages, dwelling for several long seconds on several pages at uneven depths into the book. "Yep... this is the one." She held the book to her chest and crawled under her table.

Luz stood protectively by her cart and waited, hoping that Eda was leafing through her cashbox, or at least a box of really cool detective stories.

After a minute Eda clamored out under the front end of the table, a large handbag over her shoulder. She tapped the Audubon book on one of the bell jars.

A man sat up behind the table, looking dazed. "...did you find the Almanac, m'am?"

"I sure did!" Eda said, beaming at him. "I've been waiting for it a long time. My bird-watcher buddies are gonna get a real kick out of this."

"Oh, yes," he said, adjusting his glasses. "While the volume is legendarily unsuited for accurate bird-watching information, this tome is particularly lovingly bound... how about... twenty pounds?"

"Fifteen guineas?" Eda said, inquisitively.

"Yes, agreeable," the man said.

Eda counted out fifteen pounds and fifteen shillings and forked them over while Luz watched in a state of absolute confoundment.

"And a finder's fee," Eda said, handing over ten pounds in paper to Luz.

Luz stared at the offering, took it, and tucked it inside a vest pocket she'd sewn on the inside, over her heart. "What. In. The heck. Was that?" she whispered.

"A business transaction," Eda said, tucking the book into her handbag and buttoning it up thoroughly, culminating with a padlock. "Now, how's about we get back to the Owl House so we can talk about unloading your inventory?"

Luz blinked. She whispered as Eda walked around her cart, "No, seriously, what did you just do?"

"Borrow the guy's stall for like fifteen minutes. If I got a pound a minute, I'd be a happy woman. How 'bout you? You'd get a better price at my building than in these streets."

She felt multiple conflicting emotions. On one hand, she had a pretty good feeling that she had just been tricked into stealing something. On the other, ten pounds was ten pounds. On the other other hand, she didn't want to make money dishonestly. But if Eda had been truthful she'd just given a guy money for a book he didn't own. And, uh, maybe--

"Ut ut, we have 'til three," Eda said, holding up a wristwatch and tapping the cracked face. "You wanna hack it on your own, that's cool, you've got good hustle, Luz. But if you wanna hitch your wagon to the fastest-rising book-selling outfit in the British Isles, I'm always looking for a new hiree."

Luz weighed her options.

* * *

Eda's bookmobile squealed to a halt in front of a narrow brownstone apartment. Three stories tall, it looked maybe a little wider than Eda's truck. Hopefully the building's roof had fewer holes than the leather cover of the truck cab, and maybe didn't buck like a wild horse even on smooth cobblestone.

Luz slumped to her knees on the sun-warmed pavement. "Oh, man," she said, clutching her stomach. "I'm so glad I didn't eat before I left home."

"Really?" Eda said, lifting the truck's loading door. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I think we have some tea stuff in the shop, if you want."

"Maybe when the world stops jumping..." Luz said.

"Take your time," Eda said, wheeling out Luz's handcart, which she had generously tied down in a way Luz had taken to be overly generous before the ride began. "Door's not gonna be locked, so if you wanna do some hard sleep I ain't gonna stop ya." She walked it up to the front door and stepped in; not a moment later she opened it up enough to stick her head through.

"Hey, Luz!"

"Yeah?" Luz said. She felt a brief taste of uncertainty before remembering that Eda had read one of her books, and probably read the frontplate that had her, her mom, and her dad's name inked in.

"Check this out," Eda said. Luz now noticed that the owl symbol on Eda's card had a matching bas relief plate on the front door. Not only that, but it was articulated like a puppet; Eda made the face turn around, blink, and chatter.

"My name's Hootie, hoot hoot!" said "Hootie." "Welcome to the Owl House! We sell books and have an 'owl thing' going on! I'm actually alive! _I'm desperate for validation! Belie-e-e-e-eve me-e-e-e!_ " The owl's eyes somehow got wider.

"Ain't he a stinker," Eda said, gently slapping the faceplate.

Luz giggled. "Wow, that thing is annoying."

"Oh yeah, he's just the worst. Come on in, kid, people will be asking questions."

The Owl House smelled like a used bookstore, which meant it had the best smell in the entire world, or at least neck-and-neck with the smell of a library. The front room had a little front desk crowded out by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, former library carts piled with books, a bursting magazine stand right by the desk...

"Close your mouth, kid," Eda said, taking a seat behind her desk and pulling on a pair of gloves. "Kosherization is about to go down. If you wanna get some tea, readin' room's back there--" she thumbed behind her. "Either hall's fine. Grab a book or something if you want."

Luz took her up on the offer--to sit, if nothing else. She took the left-hand hallway, which was crowded near to the point of uselessness by the bookshelves. So many titles. The ones in this hall were labeled SCIENCE and there were a lot of almanacs and old textbooks and treatises and whatnot, but they still looked cool. This was the stuff that the geniuses of today were studying to invent, like, ray guns and Cavorite hovercraft and other such wonders of the future.

The reading room was a former kitchen, with a sink poorly hidden under a towel and a now-missing oven replaced with a second magazine rack. The eggshell paint was peeling and the delicious book-scent competed with the ghost-smell of cold. Luz declined the tea, but she sifted through the rack until she found the March '31 issue of Wonder Stories and took a seat, browsing to see if she recognized any authors or illustrators.

She lost herself to the cozy haze of reading. Her hands were manipulators at the end of little brown sticks, the magazine a doorway Elsewhere. An Elsewhere where heroes and heroines could match wits with villainous masterminds, where great detectives would solve insoluble mysteries with the ease of turning a joke book upside-down to read the punchline, where steaming-hot bachelors would take gorgeous beauties in their arms and lay 'em out with a passion she could never hope to know.

The real world was such a pain. Why bother with it any more than you had to?

She had made it to Chapter 3 of The World Without Name when she heard something moving in the wall, the too-familiar sound of a rat in the walls. It jolted her out of reverie. Dang it! she thought. Friggin' rats!

She closed the magazine, her finger marking her place, and listened closely to the rat. She crept up to the wall, following the halting scrabble of its little nails digging into the plaster.

Maybe, she thought, if I catch a rat, Eda will give me a rat-catching bonus. Now, all I have to do is figure out how to yank it out of the wall without breaking the plaster, and I'll be in business.

Wait. Maybe this is in fact a stupid idea.

But just in case it isn't, listen harder.

She pressed her ear to the wall just where the little sucker had come to a halt.

She felt for Dama Aguda. She could probably paste over a stab in the wall. It'd take a little doing, but she'd improvised faster and under more pressing circumstances back at home.

" _Don't you dare_ ," something in the wall said.

Her blood froze. "Whaaaaaat," she whispered.

"You don't know what powers you're trifling with, child!" the voice said, a high, arrogant voice. "You presume to attack he who is the first among the Million Favored Ones, the king of all he surveys! You would spy on me as if I were a common rat..."

"You're not a rat?" Luz said.

"Oh, you wish I was a rat..." the voice in the wall said. "You'll wish to the end of your days that you were..."

The front door opened, and the rat behind the walls scrambled away, up toward the ceiling. The voice stopped. Obviously that wasn't a rat, she thought, stepping away from the wall. But damnation, that had creeped her out.

She turned her keen ears to the front room.

Murmurs. Three voices, Eda's, a man's, a woman's.

"At great expense," Eda said.

Murmurs.

"Intact?" the man said.

Come on, speak up, Luz thought. How can I eavesdrop if you don't shout your conversation?

"Of course!" Eda said. "I made sure that..." Mumble, mumble...

The woman said something.

"Not a soul," Eda said.

Murmurs. A pause. Too long a pause, they must actually be whispering now, unless they heard Luz sneaking around (impossible, she avoided the squeaky floorboard she'd stepped on the way here) and were coming to kick her ass. (They could try, if they had heard, which they didn't.)

"Pleasure doing business," Eda said.

And soon the door opened again and shut firmly.

Footsteps. Luz rushed back to the table and opened the magazine and pretended to read.

Eda walked into the reading room, chest thrust out, hands on her hips. "Hey, kid!" she said. "Guess who just earned herself a finder's fee?"

"...the same one I did earlier?" Luz said.  
"Oh, better than that," Eda said, laying out a brick's worth of paper. "Thirty guineas, baby. That brings it to ten precent, as is tradition."

Thirty-one pounds and ten shillings?! Forty-one and ten total?! Luz's heart skipped a beat. That's ten percent? How in the hell--

"How much of that is Grimhammer getting?" Luz said. "What's his cut?"

"Not a penny, that cheap prick," Eda said, taking the other seat at the table. She pulled a flask out of her purse and knocked back a slug. "Thinks he's so smart. Didn't know what he had, he just thought I shouldn't have it if I wanted it. I was gonna give him fifty, but nope... he bought it for two pounds, did you know that? He didn't know a damn thing about it. You and me..." Eda leaned over, and Luz leaned back in turn. "We spread the money around where it needed to go. Nice guy doin' his job, nice girl lookin' to get some cash for the family, and me, the hardest-working bookhound in the business. We did good, kid."

"I'm a thief," Luz said, grimly. "You tricked me."

"Maybe a little," Eda said, with a dismissive gesture.

"I did crimes! Book crimes!" Luz said, clutching her chest. "Nobody should be deprived of books through trickery! Maybe not even deprived, period! I mean, I was kind of freaking just selling our books!"

"You don't wanna sell your books?" Eda said.

"No!" Luz blurted. "I love them! We just..." She slumped in her chair. "Ah, dang it, you tricked me again."

"Hey, you don't wanna say, I don't wanna know. Take your cash, or don't, if you don't feel like it. No skin off my back." She shrugged and took another swig. "Look, kid... the book trade is rough. There's a lot of books floating around, especially nowadays, and they're just flopping out into the streets where anyone can snatch 'em up. They're not going where they need to go, to hands they belong to be in. Priceless relics left to flounder 'cause of the economy! Me, I see books to where they need to go. If that means jerks like Grimhammer gotta get fleeced... well. They shouldn't be so dumb and ugly."

Luz looked down at her magazine.

"Keep the mag too, kid. If you wanna." Eda took one last sip before capping her flask. "Wonder Stories doesn't sell worth a damn, not in this neighborhood."

"I... dunno."

"Well! No expiration date, here. If you're interested in a job, come back, offer's still on the table. If not, been nice meeting yo, Luz."

"I'll... think about it."

"Think well."

Luz pushed away from the table, taking the money, almost leaving the magazine, then taking it too. "Is there a building behind this one?" Luz said.

"Why, lookin' to move in?" Eda said.

"No, just wondering."

"Of course there is," Eda said. "Walls're real thin. Hear a lot of weird stuff."

Luz nodded, and left.

* * *

It was a quiet evening at the Noceda apartment. Mom returned at half-past eight, finding her daughter asleep on the couch and a pot of cold tripe soup on the stove.

"How was the flea market, _miha_?" mom said, between mouthfuls of soup. She hadn't even bothered heating it back up.

"Oh, funny story," Luz said. "I found this nice little flea market in Tralfagar Square. This book-seller lady, I helped her find a book and she made a lot of money selling it to the right person. And I got a finder's fee!"

"Is that right?" Mom said, curious. "How much?"

"Forty pounds," Luz said.

Mom's eyes widened behind her glasses. "That's..." She nodded. "That's not bad at all. Does she need more work?"

"I... she said she did," Luz said.

"You should take her up on that," Mom said. "We could use some more forty-pound paydays."

Luz nodded. "Yeah," she said. "That is a pretty good reason to go back."

"Nervous, miha?" Mom said. She set the bowl down on the living room/dining room/rumpus room table. "Was she sketchy?"

"I dunno," Luz said. "I've never known a bookhound before."

"'Bookhound,'" Mom chuckled. "Sounds exciting, at least."

"Yeah," Luz said. "It was definitely that."

"It is just me," she said. "But I'd be raring to go back there if I were you."

Luz nodded. "Yeah... when you say it out loud, like that."

"It's strange to hear you so un-confident, _miha_. Seize the day!" She pumped her fist. "And besides--it beats killing time in _this_ hole."

"Yeah!" Luz said, smiling. "That settles it. Tomorrow, I'm gonna start bein' a book scout."

"Lucifer the Book Scout," Mom said, patting her daughter on the head. "Now that's a story I'd read."

* * *

That night, Luz dreamed of great, looming shapes in the darkness, stretching high above her sleeping body as she lay curled up next to her mother in their shared bed. All around them strange things moved just out of the corner of her eye, watching, waiting.

Waiting for Luz to act.


	2. The New Girl in the Owl House

At eight in the morning, the sun burning through the low smoggy clouds, Luz hiked down the street to the Owl House. Her belly was weighty with toast and jam; breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and she wanted to be ready to hit the bricks and practice keeping food down if it came to riding in the bookmobile again.

Luz knocked three times just under Hootie.

Eda opened the door a crack, peered down on Luz, then swung it open wide. "Hey, Luz! Here for the job, or here to say no?"

"I'd like to be your book scout, Ms. Clawthorne! It is 'miss,' right?" She held out her hand.

Eda gave her a good strong shake. "For life. Now, come on, I've got a big job for you, and it can't wait another second."

And that's how Luz spent her first day sorting the broadsheets alphabetically by author, subject, political affiliation, and sanity (high to low).

This she carried out on the second story. It had multiple rooms at one point, judging by the lines on the floor inexpertly covered by the broadsheet stands, but now it was one big attic-smelling room for newspapers, bulletins, church newsletters, all kinds of crap. It was maybe the least-exciting room in the entire building, but it was still a bookstore, and she was getting paid.

She listened closely for the rats in the walls, hearing nothing but Eda walking downstairs and occasionally talking to herself. Sometimes she found herself lost in the photographs--cops and politicians, gangsters and celebrities, Figures Of Note. Handsome rogues on the run for crimes of the century and their gorgeous molls.

Eda checked in every hour, checking her progress and once bringing her a meat pie for lunch. "This one smells alright, right?" Eda said, her head poking up from the stairwell, setting a plate on the floor. "Dry your hands before you get back to work, I have to mark down prices if there's grease stains."

"Yess'm!" Luz said, crawling over to her lunch. She lay on the floorboards and got to munching, sniffing her pie after the first bite to see if it smelled worse after. Nope, it smelled fine... enough.

Eda chuckled. "Girl after my own heart. I think you're gonna be good for bid'ness. It was getting a little lonely around here."

"You didn't have any book scouts before?" Luz said with a full mouth.

"Well... I _have_ book scouts," Eda said, taking a step up on the staircase. She crossed her arms on the floor and rest her head on her arms. "But they just show up, point me in the right direction or plop a book on my desk, money changes hands... you know, it's business. People like you, who actually like books, on top of being good at getting them? That's something I need more of in my life."

"Can't wait to find the next one," Luz said.

"Me neither, kid. Once I break you in like a wild stallion." She imitated cracking a whip. Luz whinneyed. "Gotta teach you how to get an eye for books. Let me guess, you're bored out of your skull?"

Luz shrugged.

"Good. Because this is practice. It's not just, 'Oh, look, Treasure Island, signed by the author, squiz-ass binding, and it used to be Queen Victoria's?' Anybody can see that. That's nothin'."

"Like, it's not expensive?" Luz said, swallowing the last bite of pie.

"Oh, it'd be freak-ass expensive," Eda said. "Like, _holy shit,_ retire for life, or at least 'til you get bored again. But anybody can tell at a glance that's gonna make you mad bank. You know what made that Audubon almanac so special, Luz?"

"Not a dang clue," Luz said, kicking her feet in the air, listening intently.

"Heh, well. The long and short of it is," Eda said, taking a few more steps up and then a seat on the third step from the top, "it's the worst bird-watching almanac of all time. The entries start out okay, but then, as you wade in deeper--the photos are out of order, the illustrations are done by someone who's never seen a bird before, even the page numbers don't line up with the dates. It's a disaster. If you're a birdwatcher, it's worth nothing."

"Four hunnert pounds nothing?"

Eda pointed, smirking. "Unless. The person you're selling with has a bad sense of humor, and your book is ex libris the fucking 26th President of the U-nited States, Teddy Roosevelt himself."

"Ex-what?"

Eda took the plate. "Get back to sortin', kid. You'll pick up the lingo."

Man, thought Luz, as she brushed her hands on her trousers. That was from a _president's_ library? And it wasn't under glass? No wonder Eda wanted it saved from Grimhammer. Eda must be some kind of genius.

Start payin' attention, Luz, she told herself. It'll make you tons of cash.

When four o'clock rolled around, Luz knocked on the floor. "I'm done, Miss Clawthorne!"

"Eda, please," Eda said, hiking upstairs. She inspected the broadsheets, taking about ten seconds to scan the stands. "Mm. Looks good." She held out a pair of crowns and dropped them; Luz snatched them out of the air without effort. "Tomorrow, can you come in early? I'm thinking you work five to three."

"Oh, before dawn," Luz said, laughing a little. "When it's creepy and dangerous."

"...mm, suppose it is," Eda said, scratching her chin. "How about seven to five?"

"No," Luz said, "no no no, I mean, I can totally do five to three. Just that it is kind of dark and creepy at that time! Just thinking aloud, the way I do."

Eda nodded. "That's the spirit. Courage isn't a lack of fear but... something, something. See you tomorrow, kid."

The next morning, well before the sun rose and her mother was still softly snoring next to her, Luz crept out of bed, mindful of phantasms that may still be standing in the dark, and crept through the streets of London as if an evil child with a book of matches was looking for her from the clouds.

Shivering under her coat, she skipped up the steps to the Owl House. Just a few more seconds and she would be indoors--

\--and Hootie blinked at her. "Good morning, hoot hoot!"

"Gaah!" Luz said, going for Dama Aguda.

Hootie receded in the door until his face was flush rather than jutting out. "Oh, God, don't just shout at people, hoot hoot! It's like three in the morning!"

"You shouted first, you--" Luz said, before shaking her head. "Talking to a puppet again. I told mama I would stop... Hootie, you're making a liar out of me."

Eda opened the door, cackling. "Goddamn, girl. We gotta toughen you up. You can't be a wuss in the bookhound business, they'll eat you alive out there."

"I'm tough!" Luz said, standing up straight and sticking out her chest. "Tough like leather! Hard as nails!" She flexed, displaying no muscle of note.

"Good, good. That means you'll have an easy time getting these boxes up from the basement to the third floor."

* * *

Luz learned over the next week about the floors of the Owl House and Eda's system for keeping the place organized.

First, of course, was the basement, where the dogs lived; that is, the laughably common, damaged, or cheap filler they used to round out the edges of the budget. It was a sad lot in life, but they had the broom and mop and feather duster to keep them company.

The first floor was what Eda called "general interest," something the average Joe walking in off the street might be interested in. There was some squiz here to entice customers with deeper pockets, but they were safeguarded by evergreen favorites, popular novels, and the less-weird genres: your fantasies, your science fictions, that sort of thing.

The second floor was where things got intense. That one Eda called the "special interest," which in addition to the broadsheets there dwelled religious texts--books about the Bible, not Bibles proper, Eda explained, along with books about pagan religions, pro-, anti-, how-to, and how-to-stop. The pride here was a lovingly restored _Der Hexenhammer_ , behind layers of glass.

The third floor Luz went to the least, and which Eda was the most defensive of, what she called the Hall Of Champions. Only their finest books, ex libris the famous and infamous, the rarest, the most definitive. The top floor looked more or less like the apartment it used to be, albeit one where the bedroom was turned into a showroom for the tastiest buys in the entire House.

"The dirty secret?" Eda said, tapping at, but not actually tapping, a scarred hardback titled Monsters and Their Kynde. "Most of these are franks. This one, especially. Two dogs, three hospital copies, and I had to commission that cover because every right-thinking freak with a copy of this in their house had the sense to make it look like nothing special. A little initial investment... and I turned a few pounds and pence into this."

"Wow," Luz said, staring in awe. "You gotta wear a lot of hats for this job."

"More hats than a haberdasher," Eda said. "Now stop breathing on it, every germ I see flying out of your nose is scratching more and more pennies off the asking price."

All in all, a good week.

* * *

On her ninth day of work, Luz and Eda were taking their lunch on the front desk.

"By the by, kid," Eda said, knocking back a cup of coffee, "tomorrow we're going to an auction. I haven't taught you about auctions yet, have I?"

"No, m'am!" Luz said, giving her apple core a toss at the garbage can and missing by scant feet.

"Pick that up."

"I was gonna," Luz said, doing just that.

"Anyway. The Parks are having an auction tomorrow in Chelsea. The depression finally got to 'em and they gotta liquidate a lot of assets--including that famous library of theirs."

"Aw," Luz said. "What're we gonna do? Raise money so they don't have to move out?"

"Oh, those suckers are way beyond doomed," Eda said with a dismissive swipe. "What we're gonna do is..." She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her vest and unfolded it on the desk. There was an entry underlined in pencil. "...me and the rest of the Book-sellers Club of Boiling are gonna knock on lot 19. You know the knock?"

"...yo-o-o-o-u're gonna... talk smack about it, and drive the price down, and pick it up for cheap?"

"Almost, but not quite entirely wrong!" Eda said, clapping. "What we're gonna do is this: the Owl House won the rummy game at the last BCB meaning, so we're gonna do the bidding at the actual event. We get the goods, and then we sell the lot piece by piece at the next BCB meeting to people who understand what they're buying. Then us nice folk split the winnings and we all go home happy."

"Ohhh. We're gonna flip it!"

"Exactly. Oh, and we're gonna bid on whatever booky junk looks cool, too, but that's 'cause mama's a freak who's gotta get that sweet, sweet paper."

"Hell yeah!" Luz said, pumping her fist.

"Hell, yeah," Eda said, mimicking the movement. "Sleep well and eat the biggest breakfast you got, you're gonna need the energy. Especially because I don't even wanna look at the third floor right now but it's desperately in need of mopping."

"Right on it!" Luz said, going for the basement.

She heard Eda say something just as she popped down the steps. It caught her off-guard; she only made out a few words over her own excited heartbeat and the pounding of hershoes on the creaky wooden steps.

"--ain't that right, Hootie?"

Oh, hey, mom, Luz thought. My boss talks to inanimate objects too.

Maybe it's not as weird as you think, _huh_ , mom?

* * *

Luz commit herself to sleep the moment she got done with dinner--literally the moment, setting aside her plate on the nightstand, rolling over, and willing herself into the darkness.

When she awoke, her mother at her back, she snuck out to the kitchenette and fried up some eggs and toast and, after a little hesitation, a couple of sausages from the icebox. Wrapped in her heaviest coat with Dama Aguda up her sleeve, she stole out into the pre-dawn morning.

The fog was low and heavy this morning, and reeking of smoke. She hiked through the darkness, half the street lamps broken or simply off this late at night or early in the morning when only the bottom dregs of London were working. The humped and looming skyline of the city put her in mind of the iguanadons at the Crystal Palace.

It was one of her last happy memories from Before, a family trip to see the dinosaur statues. Luz had been bursting with excitement at the prospect, only to fall into terrified silence and stillness at the sight of them. They all had their uniquely terrifying traits--the needle-nosed crocodiles with seemingly hundreds of equally needle-like teeth, the sea monster with an eye like a peeled orange, the pleading megalosaurus casting its gaze on heaven--but the iguanadons had haunted her the most.

The power of those long-dead things was captured well in green-gray stone. Those wide, boggling, idiot eyes, the nose horns, the teeth no less intimidating than that of the myriad carnivores, the bulky, scaly bodies--those things had individual muscles larger than Luz's entire body. And science had unearthed their ancient remains, dead so long they'd been turned to stone by geological processes Luz couldn't pretend to understand. Dragons had been real once upon a time, and something had put them all in the ground.

Hopefully all in the ground.

She would never tell anyone this willingly, but when she went out into the dark--and it was dark now, the streets slick with midnight rain turned to ice--when the great beast of London was as close as it came to being asleep, it wasn't armed robbery or other human dangers that pricked up the fine hairs on her arms. It was the prospect that the night would spew out a gift for her, that the ancient past or unguessed and hidden present would bear down on her, eyes frantic, lips foaming.

A man has the decency to bleed to death when you cut him up enough. What could a girl with a razor do against something like that? Nothing but die screaming.

The honk of a truck horn stole her from her frightful reverie with a blessed spike of reflexive terror. "Holy crap, guy!" Luz said, spinning around with a choice hand gesture.

"Not a guy!" Eda said over the idle of her engine. The Owlmobile was puttering in place just behind Luz, its headlights off.

"...How long have you been following me?" Luz said. "With the headlights off?"

"Eh, quarter mile, maybe," Eda said. (Luz would have know way to know, but Eda hadn't bothered with the headlights tonight; the atmosphere was terrific and she had no intent on spoiling the mood with a couple of bitch-beams. The night was hers.)

"Jerk," Luz said, climbing into the passenger seat. "We got coffee?"

"Don't you know it," Eda said, waving a tall thermos at Luz. Another was clenched between her thighs. Luz opened the offered bottle and a bright, bracing waft of coffee scent hit her nose. She took a sip. It was strong enough to smash through a brick wall, just as Eda liked it and Luz was getting used to.

"Alright," Luz said, strapping herself in with the lap belt. "Let's buy us some dang books!"

"[Cue the music, baby!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npEIE9xIPVs)" Eda shouted, and the Owlmobile grumbled off into the obscenely early morning.


End file.
